Cads, Cards, Fools and the Bard

Queen Elizabeth II probably won't be getting homesick during her short stay in Moscow. But in the unlikely event that she should, the British Council has seen to the remedy, arranging for a minor storm of purely British theatrical entertainment to accompany the royal visit.


It is called the British Cultural Festival, and what it means for the rest of us is that, for a few days, the West End has come to Teatralnaya Square.


Tonight you can catch Peter Duncan and Hayley Mills in Ian Talbot's musical production of "The Card" for the New Shakespeare Company, while Cheek By Jowl's acclaimed all-male, interracial modern-dress interpretation of Shakespeare's "As You Like It" opens tomorrow and plays through Oct. 22. Out of Joint, a one-year-old touring company, kicked off the festival with Sir George Etherege's "The Man of Mode," which ran from Oct. 11-14.


"The Card," based on Arnold Bennett's 1911 novel of the same name, and playing at the joyously ornate Operetta Theater, is a lovely, if predictable romp with Denry Machin, a lovable, poor-born cad who scraps his way to wealth, respectability and love.


Duncan, with his shining ivory smile, irrepressible energy, and irresistible charisma, gets much more out of Denry than was put there by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, the authors of the book. One occasionally wonders whether the authors didn't set themselves the task of seeing how many cliched punch lines they could cram into one show. Similarly, most of the songs by Tony Hatch, Anthony Drewe and Jackie Trent sound naggingly like something you've heard before but just a little less catchy and not quite as pretty. Still, with the electrically charged Duncan leading a top-notch supporting cast, and with an attractively versatile set by Tim Goodchild, "The Card" is a delightful over-achiever.


As Ruth, Denry's dancing teacher, first love and a gold digger with vision, Jessica Martin is a pixie, an endlessly sympathetic seductress. Nellie, Ruth's friend-turned-rival, is played by Jenna Russell with a dignified patience that never fails to let her genuine charms shine through. Finally, it may not be her most demanding role ever, but the graceful Hayley Mills brings a world of warmth to the graciously unorthodox Countess of Chell.


In "The Man of Mode," director Max Stafford-Clark spotlighted one of the more enduring plays in the English repertoire -- a classic restoration comedy first produced in 1676. Brisk, chatty and witty, Etherege's send-up of polite society's free-wheeling mores of courtship laid the ground for a tradition that has remained alive through Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward and beyond.


Out of Joint's performance was a pleasant, literate diversion, its cascade of repartee usually evoking silent smiles rather than peels of laughter. The actresses, gussied up nicely in Peter Hartwell's costumes, worked a tad too hard at getting laughs to ever really get them. More on target was David Westhead, who was charmingly cunning as the young Mr. Dorimant, a Lothario who has dumped one girlfriend and is working through a second to get at a third.


But best of all was the towering Tim Potter. His finicky Sir Fopling Flutter would have pleased even John Donne, who called this coolly eccentric character a "Fool, so nicely writ,/The ladies wou'd mistake him for a Wit."





"The Card," a production of the New Shakespeare Company, plays tonight at 7 P.M. at the Operetta Theater, 6 Pushkinskaya Ulitsa. Tel. 292-04-05. "As You Like It," a production of Cheek by Jowl, plays Oct. 19-22 at 7 P.M. at the Maly Theater, 1/6 Teatralnaya Square. Tel. 923-2621. Performances are in English.